This Week in Youtube: We Miss You William McKinley & Other Dead Prez

You know what you mostly can’t joke about? Presidential assassinations. I’ve started writing this damn article like five times now only to realize that what I was saying would probably result in the Secret Service putting a fist up my ass (and not in a good way). So forgive me for treading lightly, and instead, just use your imaginations to fill in the hilarious things I might have said if this were a less nationally-sensitive topic like, oh I don’t know, anal fisting.

We’re talking presidential assassinations today because September 14th, 1901, William McKinley, the 25th President of this fine country, died from wounds suffered as a result of an assassin’s bullet. McKinley, who was actually shot on September 4th, hung around for an extra ten days, likely complaining about there being nothing good to watch on television (as it had not yet been invented). Gangrene from poor medical standards was as much to blame for his death as anything, but the subject of “gangrene” makes for much less palatable Youtube videos.

McKinley was the third president of five to taste cold lead in his guts: the others were Abraham Lincoln (1865), James Garfield (1881), John F. Kennedy (1963), and Ronald Reagan (1981 — but he survived, Reagan SMASH!)

So in honor of McKinley kicking the bucket, biting the dust, shuffling off his mortal coil, and speed bucking the black pony on the Thunder Express to Hell (I made that last one up), I’ve rounded up a collection of Youtube videos that somehow commemorate each of our dead head homies (*pours some malt liquor on the Oval Office carpet).